All posts about
UCD

Replacing the user story with the job story

Added on 23 September 2013 Peter Bogaards
These stories will go further than agile, scrum or service design.

“I’ve written about the problem with user stories before. At the time, I found it better to just have the team talk over proposed changes to the product. This worked great when the team had gelled and the product is very mature; however, now I’m working with a new team and building a product from scratch. In this case, because our canvas is blank, we are having trouble getting on the same page when it comes to customer motivations, events and expectations. But today, things have turned around. I’ve come across a great way to use the jobs to be done philosophy to help define features. I call them ‘Job Stories’.”

(Alan Klement a.k.a. @alanklement)

User-centred design research for international users

Added on 27 August 2013 Peter Bogaards
i18n for UX design.

“It is helpful to consider the principles of user-centred design when building any website, but it is of particular importance when creating a site that is intended to appeal to a global audience. At a high level the process is simple: understand your users’ needs, try to build those requirements into your digital solution, the test your design throughout to validate your assumptions or revise accordingly, and only release the product when you are certain you have met as many of these as possible. This should ensure that most potential usability issues have been removed, and that the user has a memorable, persuasive, and compelling experience of the brand and the useful services it offers.”

(Chris Rourke a.k.a. @crourke ~ .net magazine)

The future of human-centered design

Added on 19 June 2013 Peter Bogaards
Copernicus and his heliocentrism are getting a lot of traction these days with outside-in thinking.

“HCD has been a breakthrough for our industry – it’s repositioned design as a tool to help transform product development by ensuring customer’s needs are met and also by helping to uncover people’s latent needs (those not surfaced by traditional focus groups for instance). We are taught to think about the world in three lenses as designers: desirability – what people want, feasibility – the capabilities of a firm, and viability – its financial health.”

(Nathan Waterhouse a.k.a. @natwaterhouse ~ Firm follows form)

UCD Toolbox: Find, learn and apply methods for user-centered design

Added on 22 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
A great initiative. Now, keep it up-and-running. And fresh!

“We believe that creating objects that people love requires the right tools and methods. In fact, using the wrong method can lead to bad design decisions. But with over 200 methods and tools available, which ones could you use in your situation? That’s why we give you access to a large chunk of the worlds’ created methods, tools, techniques and resources for User Centered Design. We are making all of them searchable and executable. You can even publish your own method.”

(About UCD Toolbox)

What does a user-centered design process look like?

Added on 13 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Reading the high-level phases, thought it was rather circular, iterative and incremental than linear.”

“What really differentiates user-centered design from a more traditional waterfall model of software design is the user feedback loop, which informs each phase of the project. This feedback loop is established through the use of a range of techniques that have become the staple for UX Designers. There are a ton of them, and knowing when to use which techniques during which phase of a project comes with experience. Personally, I find experimenting with new techniques and tweaking old favorites is part of the fun of being a UX Designer.”

(Matthew Magain a.k.a. @mattymcg ~ UX mastery)

Storyboarding in the software design process

Added on 8 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Great proof that software design is the cinematography of the 21st century

“Using storyboards in software design can be difficult because of some common challenges and drawbacks to the tools we have. The good news is that there’s a new, free tool that tries to address many of these issues. But before I get into that, let’s revisit the value of using storyboards (and stories in general) in software design.”

(Ambrose Little a.k.a. @ambroselittle ~ UX Magazine)

The four waves of user-centered design

Added on 30 January 2013 Peter Bogaards
Always loves categorizations of our history. Surfing the waves of Information Design.

“As practitioners, we must broaden our understanding of innovation from both business and user-experience perspectives. From a business perspective, we need to empathize with the impluse to reject the investment of resources innovation requires. Innovation is embraced only when the value gained is substantially greater than the investment costs: a marginal gain is rarely adequate. Our past practices have been confined almost exclusively to our existing, primary user market. It’s time to direct some of our attention to the fringe markets where disruptive technologies take hold.”

(William Gribbons ~ UX Magazine)

Are personas still relevant to UX strategy?

Added on 21 January 2013 Peter Bogaards
They will always be a great starting point for the unknowns of empathy and UCD.

“There have been some who have proclaimed the impending demise of personas as a UX design approach since shortly after their introduction. While the optimal approach to creating and employing personas is still evolving—thanks to more useful data becoming available to design teams and new project-management methods—their usefulness has not yet diminished. If anything, personas have become even more useful because they put a human face on aggregated data and foster a user-centered design approach even within the context of efficiency-driven development processes.”

(Paul Bryan a.k.a. @paulbryan ~ UXmatters)

Stop designing for ‘users’

Added on 11 January 2013 Peter Bogaards
A provocative idea, but on the mark.

“Most products support activities underpinned by collaboration and sharing. Designing for individuals may actually be harmful because these activities reflect ongoing transformations of artifacts, individuals, and social interactions. Focusing on individuals might improve things for one person at the cost of others.”

(Mike Long a.k.a. @mblongii ~ ThoughtWorks Studios)

Design thinking isn’t about thinking. It is about doing.

Added on 11 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Multi-disciplinary teams rulez.

“Products are developed by large multi-disciplinary teams. The teams deal with many topics requiring the expertise of several specialists simultaneously. They have to decide together if something is a problem; propose multi-disciplinary solutions; and align their activities into a seamless whole. Stated differently: team members have to think collectively, which is named team cognition. In September 2012, Guido Stompff received his PhD at Technical University of Delft, faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. The topic was team cognition in high tech development teams, and how designers contribute to it. This website are bits and pieces of his observations and findings, combined with reflections on trending topics.”

(Guido Stompff a.k.a. @guidostompff ~ Team Cognition)

When Is User-Centered Design Selfish?

Added on 8 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Is there any other design approach than UCD?

“Who benefits from user-centered design according to standard wisdom? Designers and their employers benefit, because they end up with better products. End users (that amorphous generalised group) benefit, because their software-using lives are more satisfactory. Researchers benefit, because they get papers published about their thoughtful and inclusive design methodologies. What I want to know is whether particular users who contribute to the design process actually get anything out of it? And do they stand to lose anything?”

(Judy Robertson ~ Communication of the ACM)

(Why) Is UXD the Blocker in Your Agile UCD Environment?

Added on 4 September 2012 Peter Bogaards
The leaner, the meaner.

“Many organizations are moving from waterfall to agile software development methods. They often combine this shift with a move to user-centered design (UCD). This makes sense because, in addition to bringing great intrinsic benefits, UCD has a lot in common with agile. Both encourage a multidisciplinary approach, are iterative, encourage feedback, discourage bloated and overly rigid documentation, and value people over processes. However, the combination of agile and UCD all too often leads to UX design becoming the main blocker in the development process. Why is this?”

(Ritch Macefield ~ UXmatters)

Forrester Report: Digital Customer Experience Improvement Requires A Systematic Approach

Added on 20 March 2012 Peter Bogaards
Disclosure: I work at Informaat (The Netherlands).

Industrialize Processes In Support Of A Digital Customer Experience Strategy – “To consistently meet or exceed customers’ expectations, firms must take a systematic approach to digital customer experience management. In conducting in-depth interviews with 16 business professionals, Forrester found that several of these companies had adopted some best practices for digital design that delivered improvements in customer experience – leading to improved business results through increased revenues, improved loyalty, greater customer engagement, and reduced costs. However, no organization had a mature, systematic approach to consistently differentiate through superior digital customer experience. For firms to turn their digital customer experience into a sustainable source of competitive advantage, they must define a digital customer experience strategy and introduce robust tools and repeatable methodologies to support it.”

(About Informaat, experience design)

The QofC Interview: Luke Wroblewski, Author of Mobile First

Added on 5 February 2012 Peter Bogaards
LukeW and Forbes: quite a combination.

“To me it seems more like inside-out versus outside-in. Inside-out thinking is, This is our process, this is our org chart, this is how we do things, and everything is sort of we, we, we. And they try to project that out to the world. Versus outside-in is like here’s some poor guy who’s going to wind up on our website, let’s look at it from his perspective. He doesn’t care that we have these fifteen departments. He doesn’t care about these fifteen processes that we have for making decisions, he wants to do blank. And just kind of flipping your mindset like that can go a very long way.”

(Anthony Kosner ~ Forbes)

A prototype is worth a thousand words

Added on 5 January 2012 Peter Bogaards
And give me one word and I’ll make a thousand prototypes. Words are just like requirements.

“Building a good set of wireframes that become a working prototype helps your web project get off to a flying start, it becomes the hub of the design and development project which everyone involved can refer back to. You need to find the right tool to build your prototype. It must be capable of demonstrating how everything will work, whilst not being a complex or fickle beast you have to battle with. Ultimately you need a tool to help shape your thoughts and create a tangible model which is robust enough to be tested with real users and take you through to the next stages of the design process.”

(Leigh Howells a.k.a. @leigh ~ Boagworld)
courtesy of sofia svanteson